I.

Introduction

In these closing days of the 20th century, the Holy Father has called for a New
Evangelization of the world. Not surprisingly, the need for such a call has arisen
concurrently as Catholics' notion of what it means to evangelize has grown foggy. For we
are faced on one hand with those for whom evangelization is a forsaking of "oppressive
ideology" (i.e. catechesis) and an embracing of "graced humanity" in its variety of forms.
We are also faced with Bible Christians who offer assurance of eternal salvation in
exchange for passing the "two-question test." Many who fall into neither of these camps
simply try to live decent, private, and tolerant lives and do not concern themselves with
the need for evangelization at all. If there is to be a blueprint for the New Evangelization,
it is not to be found in these modern trends.

St. Thomas Aquinas' Treatise on Law does not explicitly treat the subject of an
evangelization strategy for the third millennium, yet one may discern in it just such an
asset, especially in the Angelic Doctor's treatment of the nature of man and natural law,
and his treatment of divine law. Thomas calls modern Catholic evangelists back to their
much assailed Biblical and rational roots. He accomplishes this in outlining God's own
pedagogical strategy -- how Yahweh calls and forms Israel as His own people, and then
alters the history of human nature as He Himself becomes Incarnate through Israel.
Aquinas shows that the New Law of the gospel -- the stuff of evangelization -- is most
fittingly understood, and therefore most effectively transmitted, in its immediate Biblical
context of the Old Law and Covenant. In its turn, the Old Law more perfectly instructs
man in the precepts of natural law, which has become obscured in the heart of man by
concupiscence, sin, and idolatry.

One can readily argue from Aquinas that Christian evangelization which is
Scripturally responsible and faithful must take into account man's rational and social
nature -- with all of its temporal dimensions -- as well as point man to his final end, for
this is exactly the approach of the Divine pedagogy of the Old Law revealed in Scripture.
God did not leave Israel to flounder in their supposed natural goodness, nor did He
merely present information about Himself to be responded to with the will. He formed
Israel socially, that they might be disposed to encounter God's grace and to make His
presence more tangible to those around them through their corporate life.

The contention of this paper is this: because all peoples share in one human
nature (the same nature Yahweh contend with in Israel), a study of this nature and of the
divine law as discussed by Aquinas can bring to light principles necessary for and
adaptable to the evangelization of any culture. (I am contending that to evangelize means
to proclaim to persons the truth of who they are, and the truth of who God calls them to
be.) I will first examine the nature of man as brought to light by the essence of the law
given him, this nature as the human basis of all religious quests, and the role of sin in this
quest. Part two will focus on God's dealings with Israel and on the Church as the New
Israel. Part three will suggest practical applications of Aquinas for the evangelization of
culture.
II. Of Law and Man
A. What Does It Mean to be Human?

In the face of the modern age, evangelists must closely re-examine the basic tenet
of the essence of human nature. Thomas unfolds various characteristics of man's nature as
held by the Christian tradition of antiquity as he answers the question: What is law?
Thomas defines law as having four basic components. First, law is rational. Post-
enlightenment philosophical movements have eroded this fundamental assertion of
Aquinas' that the human mind is able to know reality. Yet, this rationality is an
endowment from God (1) and is "the first principle of human acts,"(2) or that which
causes man to order his life for his final goal or end. Elsewhere in the Summa, Aquinas
shows that man's end is ultimate happiness, that is, God alone. (3) So the nature of man,
reflected in the essence of law, is first of all rational and therefore ordered to God.

Aquinas builds from this principle to show that all law is established for the
common good, because our God-given nature is also social. "[S]ince every part is
ordained to the whole as the imperfect to the perfect, and since one man is a part of the
perfect community, law must needs concern itself properly with the order directed to
universal happiness."(4) That is to say, individual attainment of the good is not the good
fully attained, because the individual is not autonomous. As Aristotle has it, the state is
the autonomous body to which individuals are ordered. (5) Man is by nature social, and
so all law must be ordered to the common good.

The last two components of the essence of law stem from man's rational and
social nature. First, human nature further requires that laws be made by those who care
for the community. Aquinas states:

Now to order anything to the common good belongs either to the whole people, or
to someone who is the vice regent of the whole people. Hence the making of a law
belongs either to the whole people or to a public personage who has care of the whole
people; for in all other matters the directing of anything to the end concerns him to whom
the end belongs.(6)

Because laws are for the common good, it is the responsibility of all, or those who
represent and care for all, to make laws. Thomas sees the principle of participation as the
key to the validity of this point, for care for others must be measured in some way to
avoid totalitarian tendencies. The principle of participation is this: Those ruling are also
ruled, and the rule which they rule by is a participation in the rule they are under. And so
Aquinas can say that each individual is a "law to himself, in so far as he shares the
direction that he receives from the one who rules him."(7) Therefore we see Aquinas
saying that the nature of man is ordered to hierarchical rule, even within his own self (as
when reason calls for acting upon the internalized higher rule that that of a lower desire.)

Lastly, law must be promulgated because it is essential that it be applied in order

for it to have binding force. To be applied it must be known, and therefore published by
the lawgiver. Thomas here points to the rational and societal nature of man resulting in
his communicative faculty and his need to be informed.

From examining the essence of law as Aquinas has it, we learn that human nature
is rational, that is, endowed with the ability to know reality which aids man towards the
good; and that man is social, meant for the common good of the whole community rather
than merely his own individual benefit. And because man is rational and social, he is also
hierarchically ordered and requires formation. Though Aquinas assumes consensus on
this understanding of human nature, moderns obviously do not share this consensus. For
evangelists to proclaim the gospel of divine sonship, they must first have a firm
foundation regarding the nature which God's grace elevates and perfects.

B. Law -- the Force of Love

Aquinas reorients the modern mind to God Who is Love as the alpha and the
omega of all order, whether that be the order of the political realm or of the Old Covenant
sacrificial system. Salient to his treatment of the four types of law is the fact that all true
law comes from the heart of God who, as Scripture tells us, has compassion on us as a
father has compassion on his children. (8) The end of all law (especially in the ordering
of the four types among themselves) is the good of mankind, that is, ultimately, to attain
eternal communion with the Blessed Trinity. Unto this end, Aquinas necessarily canopies
all other types of law under the eternal law, which refers to the law that God is in Himself
as divine reason, governing the universe.(9) Or, as the Holy Father has said in our
generation:

The different ways in which God, acting in history, cares for the world and for
mankind are not mutually exclusive, on the contrary, they support each other and
intersect. They have their origin and goal in the eternal, wise and loving counsel whereby
God predestines men and women "to be conformed to the image of his Son" (Rom. 8:29).
(10)

Aquinas refreshes us to this fact that law is the force of love, not a blustering of angry
aggression. This truth must be deeply engrafted into the heart of every evangelist so that
it may not only be taught accurately, but that it also becomes the medium of teaching.

Natural participation in the eternal law is how Aquinas presents natural law. It is
the eternal law imprinted on the rational creature; a ray of loving, divine guidance in the
soul which is to lead man to what is good and properly ordered. Human nature is
therefore "subject to divine providence... [in that] it itself partakes of a share of divine
providence, by being provident both for itself and for others. Therefore it... has a natural
inclination to its proper act and end."(11) It is natural law which impels a man to act
according to his rational and social nature, unto his natural end to do good and avoid evil.
Aquinas further develops the first principle of practical reason to include the natural
tendency toward self-preservation, self-propagation, to know the truth and shun
ignorance, and to live in society. (12)

We see that man has by nature a certain inclination to seek after God. As
Augustine tells us, man has a God-shaped void within him which has an unsatisfied
dynamic until it rests in God. Aquinas asserts that it is contranatural that man have no
religious sense. For the evangelist, the means that respect is due that which is natural to
all peoples, that is, natural religion. For it is this which bids man to be disposed to the
prevenient graces of God: "In proclaiming Christ to non-Christians, the missionary is
convinced that, through the working of the Spirit, there already exists in individuals and
peoples an expectation, even if an unconscious one, of knowing the truth about God,
about man..."(13) Though natural religion is not sufficient unto man's supernatural end, it
is an aid to the evangelist, and not an enemy in his path.

An enemy does exist, however, and that is the next point which must be
considered.

C. The Rule of the Law of Sin

If man's nature is religious, then why do not all seek God and come to know Him?
Aquinas elucidates St. Paul's teaching of the law of sin as the answer to this question:
"The law of man, which, by the divine ordinance, is allotted to him according to his
proper natural condition, is that he should act in accordance with reason... But when man
turned his back on God, he fell under the influence of his sensual impulses..." The law of
sin is therefore "deviation from the law of reason."(14) Since the fall, man's reason is
corrupted and unreliable. Aquinas stated elsewhere: "the devil oversowed another law in
man, namely, the law of concupiscence... the law of nature was destroyed by
concupiscence." (15) This means that the rational, social, hierarchically-ordered and
formation-requiring nature of man coexists with a warring proclivity away from the good.
(16) Aquinas warns evangelists that they are in competition with the individual and
societal inclinations away from God, and from him who has the power of death, that is,
the devil.(17)

Moderns must be careful to rightly identify the enemy to Christian evangelization.

Though in some cases man's nature is fallen so as to be excessively hardened and
darkened against natural law so that it is blotted out entirely, (18) man is not by nature
totally morally depraved nor is he without hope of transformation from his sinful state
into a state of glory. In other words, man's nature itself is not the enemy, as Lutheranism
holds (19); it is a good. Rather, the enemy is concupiscence and sin which weakens man's
soul, and the world and the devil which battle against him. Christian evangelization must
not only affirm the good of man's nature, but seek to restore him to knowledge of this
goodness by proclaiming the good news of sin and grace -- that while he is fallen from a
great height, grace works for him an ultimate advantage. Law is the force of love because
it calls people to separate from sin for their own well-being, for the common good of the
community, and for the honor and glory of God.

III. Of God and His People

A. How God taught Israel -- The Divine Pedagogy

 This section will investigate divine law as Aquinas discusses it with special
emphases on the ceremonial law, and on the fulfillment of the figurative sense of the Old
Law in the New Law. The divine law is that which reveals that man has not only a natural
end to the good, but a supernatural end. It is that by which God calls man into a family
bond with Himself, thereby making that bond possible. We cannot by nature know this to
be God's will -- let alone attain to it -- without His grace revealing it because God is
essentially above human nature, that is, supernatural. However, the divine law is not
contrary to human nature but corresponds to the human need for formation.

Scripture clearly shows why the law was given -- because of sin. (20) Aquinas'
treatment of law is within the salvation-historical context of Scripture. He cites God's
binding oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob(21) and states that while this shows God's free
elective purpose in choosing Israel as a people it was most fitting that the law be given at
the time of Moses, because it was then that Israel had fallen most deeply into sin and
therefore needed the law to be formed unto relationship with God.(22) It is because of
God's loving promise to the Patriarchs that He "vouchsafed both the Law and other
special benefits to [Israel]... that Christ should be born of them. For it was fitting that the
people of whom Christ as to be born should be signalized by a special sanctification."(23)
Once again we see Aquinas pointing us to God's loving, Fatherly purpose; the Law is a
"special benefit," not just a heavy fist of retribution against sin. God teaches Israel, and
forms them as their nature requires -- and yet contends with sin through the just
requirements of the law until His sons and daughters are broken and no longer self-
reliant. They are finally transformed into the anawim who look humbly for the kingdom
of God.

Now we turn to the tripartite Old Law and Aquinas' discussion of how God
formed His people through the moral, judicial, and ceremonial precepts.

The moral precepts serve to reiterate the principles of the natural law in two ways.
First, there are prohibitions against such things as murder and theft which, Thomas holds,
are immediately understood and legitimate prohibitions by natural reason. Other
principles of the moral law, he says, are ascertainable only by those with more highly
developed wisdom (for example, the command of respect for the aged), or by those who
have received instruction in the things of God (such as prohibitions against graven
images in worship). (24)

It is most important to note here why these principles need to be restated as

revelation if they are simply precepts known by human reason: "with regard to
[particular] moral precepts, the reason of many went astray, to the extent of judging to be
lawful things that are evil in themselves. Hence there was a need for the authority of the
divine law to rescue man."(25) It is possible that man's nature be distorted to such a
gross extent that he could not know right and wrong. Thus, step one in God's pedagogy is
to authoritatively confirm man's natural knowledge and correct his darkened moral
intellect. We have already referred to the need for the evangelist to correctly address the
true constitution of human nature. Here we see this evident in the divine restating of the
natural law in the moral code of revelation.
 The judicial precepts primarily concern the just ordering of society and reflect the
societal aspect of the natural law and human nature. As Douglas Kries states, they were
not "primarily enacted to prefigure the Incarnation, but were instituted first and foremost
in order to establish a just regime for the ancient Israelites,"(26) They did, however, have
some figurative value consequent to their primary purpose of ordering Israelite society in
that God was tutoring the people in covenantal values of brotherly love, mutual
assistance, preservation from idolatry, and so forth.(27) Aquinas also discusses the
efficiency of the government established in the judicial precepts, though a thorough
discussion of this point is beyond the scope of this paper. It suffices to show that God
deemed it necessary to give his people a social order for their good, and that this order
served to form a national moral standard which was to etch into the culture certain moral
values.

We can observe from the judicial law that Christians cannot ignore the political
dimension of the society they evangelize. As all the types of law proceed from the heart
of God, so the Christians gospel must permeate the political sector -- as unpopular and
impractical as this may seem to moderns.

The ceremonial law shows specifically how God sought to rehabilitate the people
from their failings against God Himself, and thereby to draw them to His love, the
violated source behind all law. In the regulations of sacrifice and ritual we see God's war
against the human inclination towards evil, especially the evil of neglect of God and of
idolatry which threatened to seduce Israel into severing relationship with God and
making alliances with demonic forces. Aquinas states that in Israel:

There were many prone to idolatry, and so it was necessary to recall them by
means of ceremonial precepts from the worship of idols to the worship of God. And since
men served idols in many ways, it was necessary... to devise many means of repressing
every single one; and, again, to lay many obligations on such men, or order that being
burdened, as it were, by their duties to the divine worship, they might have no time for
the service of idols. (28)

Therefore, the sacrifices were to endure to remind people of their proclivity to apostasy
and to ingrain into them the realization of their dependence on Yahweh not only for their
national and cultural identity, but for their very existence.

The ceremonial law also served to prefigure the Christ, though one can assume
that this significance was largely if not completely shrouded in darkness before His
coming. What it could serve to instill was the sense of divine mystery, the inkling that
there was an end beyond the strange and seemingly arbitrary stipulations that God handed
down to them, which again could stir their souls and dispose them to yearn for God's
grace.

Before we consider how an understanding of the ceremonial laws might be

understood rendered immediately useful for modern evangelists, it is necessary first to
consider how the New Law of grace sheds light on the figurative meanings of the
ceremonial precepts in the sacrifice of Christ.

Aquinas states that the Old Law sacrifices were imperfect, forecasting the perfect
sacrifice of Christ. (29) That is to say, while the Jewish sacrifices were not able to bring
man to his ultimate end of union with God, the perfect sacrifice of Christ did accomplish
this goal. After sin was "cast out of man through the accomplishment of his redemption
by Christ," the Holy Spirit was loosed on the earth and the power of grace unleashed
through faith in Christ. (30) By the Spirit's power acting on the human soul through faith,
the "students" of God's ways are now transformed into His sons and daughters; Christ is
formed in us through God's gracious action. Now the ceremonial laws are fulfilled in that
God no longer simply requires Israel to know their humbled, flattened state, but also
reveals God's work of elevating them from their sorrowing position; they are not called to
behold Him who is lifted up for them, and be healed. (31) While they still need to own
their weakness (for why would God waste centuries of tutelage?), they can now
experience the very life of God filling this weakness and empowering them to live
supernaturally.

B. Of the Church as the New Israel

It is precisely because it is a humbled Israel -- with whom God has contended for
generations -- to whom the Messiah comes, that the gospel message becomes one-
dimensional when alienated from its old covenant roots. As was mentioned above,
Aquinas couches his theology of law and grace in the context of salvation history.
Remembering this is imperative not only to understanding the Church and the New Law,
but even more so to approaching the matter of strategy for evangelization.

For the Church is not the New Israel in the sense that we are to be the new
rebellious apostates. Rather, we are the New Israel because in Christ (and therefore His
Body, the Church) the fullness of the divine plan for humanity is lived out by the
supernatural grace working with and through man's nature. The Divine plan was for
Israel to mediate God's presence to the rest of the world in their day. (32) In a similar
fashion, the Church has the call to fully mediate Christ's grace to the world in the power
of the Holy Spirit. That which is mediated is that which was given to the Church by the
Lord -- revelation in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, guarded by the Magisterium;
and the entire sacramental order. This is meant not for her only but for the whole world,
that is, for everyone who accepts her message in faith. The Christ as the New Israel
testifies to the truth of God's revealed essence, proclaims the will of God for humankind,
and embodies the locus where encounter with God births new sons and daughters. Her
witness to the world is that the law of the Lord, the dealings of God in our lives, is always
for our ultimate glory, though this glory may be shrouded in the darkness of suffering
until we see our final telos fulfilled. She rejoices in weakness because she also knows the
experience of God's power.

The living Tradition of the Church is unsevered from Israel's history and it must
never fail to be proclaimed as such, lest we become doomed to repeat the same errors
from which Yahweh sought to extricate His people. But, as was said from the outset of
this essay, those born today share the same downward proclivities and spiritual
opposition as those born before the revelation of transforming grace in the sacraments of
the Church. The theocracy of Israel is no longer a formation option for would-be seekers
of God. How then are worldlings to be drawn to the heart of the Church?

IV. Of Man and God's People -- Evangelization of Culture

Let us now consider a few applications drawn from this discussion of the natural
and divine laws and discover what practical advice Thomas provides us with.

First, we see Aquinas addressing the modern error of individualism -- that

evangelization is simply solitary souls privately repenting. We see that God's action in
salvation history is to form a people. God does not discount the individual as
unimportant, but if one is marked with special favor, it is always for the good of the
many. So our strategy needs focusing on the community at large and individual
conversion within that context. We must point our strategy towards the evangelization of
culture. This requires the witness of social justice, that is, Christian testimony to the
loving heart of Father God as expressed through upholding the natural law, for the
common good of society.

Aquinas makes it clear, however, that just as the old law was not "perfect"
because it couldn't bring man to his ultimate end (only grace can do that), in the same
way, this transformation of society is only a means to an end and not the end in itself. We
must impact cultures with Christian values and virtues, and yet the message of man's call
to become "sons in the son" must remain the evident apex of the Christian message. As
the individual is ordered to the society, so society is ordered to provide the best possible
environment for the people to seek after the highest good with the fewest impediments. A
just culture is ordered to dispose the many to openness to God's gifts of conversion and
sanctification.

Just as God bestowed on Israel a special dignity through His law, so when
Christians witness to the justice of God working in them by grace, they bear witness as
those with special dignity as God's people. The New Israel is to be the embodiment of
hope on earth, witnessing to the availability of God's transforming power for everyone
who embraces the obedience of faith. As we are beacons of hope to the world, we are to
have the effect on others that the law was to have on Israel -- to render people open to
God's gracious action in their own lives.

I will consider just two concrete examples from Aquinas' treatment of the
ceremonial precepts to discuss how evangelists can bear witness. First, as we look at the
literal cause of the ceremonial precepts -- that Israel was called to renounce idolatry and
to remember the works of the Lord -- we are reminded of the enemy of pride. Just as God
had the people perform sacrifices in repudiation of their sins, so we see New Testament
believers forsaking their serious sins with public acts of repudiation. (33) In modern
church practice, we see the need for evangelists to augment their call for repentance with
the practice and the call to specific penance -- designed to humble the pride of man.

The ceremonial laws do not only concern repudiation, however. They also
regulate positive proclamations of the things of God through the "likenesses of things set
before the eyes."(34) So the arts and architecture were to be harnessed to direct the minds
of the people to God as well. The artistic media are of course especially powerful in the
modern age. Evangelists have an urgent need to press them into service, not only to
proclaim the gospel, but also to witness to the dignity of human nature, of which art is an
expression, ordered to all that is good.

V. Conclusion

We see that the Holy Father's call to a New Evangelization is really none other
than a call to rediscover, live, and proclaim the gospel as Christian antiquity has always
understood it, to which Aquinas testifies and which he outlines in the Summa. The
Christian message is violated if it is wrenched from its Biblical context, or if man is
redefined according to Enlightenment philosophy. It is also violated if it is severed from
the flow of salvation history and if grasped in only an individualistic dimension.
Catholics must examine well and yet extricate themselves from these renderings of
evangelization, as Aquinas aides us to do, so that we may together journey unhindered to
our Fatherland.